Wind power sucks money and electricity in South Australia

On a good day South Australia has more than 40% renewable energy. On a bad day, it’s -2 or something. Wind towers suck in so many ways. They can even draw more power out than they bring in and best of all — their peak electron sucking power comes just when the state needs electricity the most.

Business blows up as turbines suck more power than they generate

The sapping of power by the turbines during calm weather on July 7 at the height of the ­crisis, which has caused a price surge, shows just how unreliable and ­intermittent wind power is for a state with a renewable ­energy mix of more than 40 per cent.

South Australia has more “renewable” wind power than anywhere else in Australia. They also have the highest electricity bills, the highest unemployment, the largest number of “failures to pay” and disconnections. Coincidence?

The emergency measures are needed to ease punishing costs for South Australian industry as National Electricity Market (NEM) prices in the state have frequently surged above $1000 a megawatt hour this month and at one point on Tuesday hit the $14,000MWh maximum price.

Complaints from business about the extreme prices – in normal times they are below $100 – prompted the state government to ask energy company ENGIE to switch its mothballed Pelican Point gas power station back on.

It’s not just about peak pricing it’s monthly pricing too:

Electricity contracts for delivery in 2017 and 2018 are priced at $91-100MWh in South Australia, compared to $50-63 in Victoria, NSW and Queensland.

South Australian NEM prices have averaged about $360MWh so far this month, Mr Morris said, compared to $80-90MWh in Victoria and NSW.

Statistics from the Australian Energy Regulator showed South Australia already had the highest proportion of disconnections in the nation. From January to March, more than 0.30 per every 100 customers or more than 2,500 South Australian residential customers were disconnected.

This is the wind power contribution in SA for the last two weeks: (this is a typical pattern, see August 2015.)

Yet this month the state has run short of power and been hit by spot prices 30 times higher than the eastern states. The government has had to beg electricity suppliers to fire up mothballed gas generators to prevent major industries from shutting down.

In recent months what was once the state’s main electricity generator, the coal-fired station at Port Augusta, was closed permanently because it couldn’t compete with subsidised renewables. Yet when storms rendered the turbines useless — too much wind — the state couldn’t import enough coal-fired power from Victoria. It was caught short and paid a high price. This was an extreme event but South Australians already pay the highest electricity prices in the country and some of the highest in the world.

Apparently spikes in electricity prices were more common in summer before SA installed a mass of solar panels. They don’t mention monthly power costs. It’s all a big conspiracy. Blame the Murdoch media pack and the importance of “smashing monopolies”. Somehow Australian corporates foolishly bray in support of the “energy oligopoly”, unlike the wise subsidy-sucking likes of Apple and Google in the US.

Marvel that in green commentary there is an assumption that our companies are so stupid they don’t support the “cheapest” form of electricity. As if the big miners like BHP Billiton, Arrium and Nyrstar haven’t sliced and diced the numbers on their electricity bills to the nth degree.

The blades are feathered in high winds or when stopped, and when they are to start up again, they must be rotated out of the feathered state.

The nacelle will just stop when the wind does, at its last setting.

Power is consumed to keep all the workings in readiness for operation. Power is needed for the system which gauges when the wind is at the correct speed for starting. Once that is reached, the whole nacelle has to be turned into the direction of the wind, and that’s not a small amount as those electric drive motors have to turn the huge weight of the nacelle with the blades, which then have to be turned out of the feathered state so the wind can take over.

While idle, there are also electrics involved in keeping the whole unit lubricated, and that proved a problem in Canada in the early days when the lubrication froze up, so they then had to add (electrically operated) heaters for the lubricating fluid.

Once operational the unit itself supplies the power for each towers electrics, turning the nacelle, rotating the blade angle etc etc etc, so again, while the unit says that it has a (nominal) Nameplate of 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5 MW or more, part of that power is lost as part of the internal operation of each tower. I’ve actually gotten into trouble for saying that as the comeback was that even a coal fired generator unit consumes fractional amounts of power, barely even noticeable when you have a 660MW generator, but this guy was adamant. He didn’t come back when I said that one coal fired generator had minute overall losses, while here you have some wind plants with anything up to 150 plus individual nacelles, all sucking power.

Now you have given these goofballs a really stupid idea, which they are bound to adopt.

South Australia’s energy problems were 100% predictable to even the most educationally challenged individuals, but obviously not to these clowns. Well, SA’s energy supply problem is going to get worse before it gets better, but that assumes there is regime change – if not, it is going to get a lot, lot, worse.

”Saving the planet’ policies can be relied on to have serious adverse consequences, which is a blatantly obvious lesson the ecoloon fraternity has still to learn.

There is a funny side to the employment graph. South Australia is worst, then Tasmania and then Queensland.

Frankly if you are young and unemployed, why not be unemployed in Queensland or Nimbin? You do not have to pay a fortune for heating and the dole is the same. So if unemployed South Australians and Tasmanians actually stayed home, the numbers would be far worse and Queensland’s better. As for the ACT, they are all public servants on better than Australian average wages. Why else would anyone live in Canberra? It is a big worry that 4% of Canberrans are unemployed. That can only be a form of early retirement to Bateman’s Bay for tenosynovitis disability from blogging or red handing.

The socialist marxists believe in picking winners and losers which is often done with taxpayer funded subsidies and consumers paying more than needed to be.

But economic prosperity is reliant on a strong economy and a strong economy is reliant on low cost electricity input to operating costs along with other competitive edge advantages over competitors, imports included.

But that is what good government should be all about, making businesses competitive.

It is unfortunate that the teletubies had so much influence over those eco-besotted in positions of power now. South Australia is in a prime place to host a vertically integrated nuclear industry. It has a world leading uranium ore deposit, vast stable expanses for safe storage and reprocessing and some good interconnectors to feed the eastern seaboard. A diversified grid/economy has to be the best thing for all. Have renewables by all means, just no subsidies. I’m willing to bet that a vertically integrated nuclear industry will do far more in every metric than renewables…..even power submarines.

Not long ago I read a comment that suggested that the new RAN Submarines will be delivered as conventional diesel-electric power units for the first few and after that they will be delivered with nuclear power.

The French design is for nuclear power and the conventional power option will be both for political reasons and for RAN operational needs relating to intelligence gathering stealth capability.

Could this nuclear plan be part of a long term plan for nuclear energy power stations too?

I am going to butt in near the top of Jo’s post commentary as I want to once again ask a couple of basic questions of the warmist trolls and anybody else who both reads and comments on climate blogs.

The entire and total rationality behind the so called and seriously badly mislabelled “Renewable Energy” push is the claim that CO2, that dreaded and grossly mislabeled “Carbon” of the Green, water melon hard leftist brigade is responsible for the so far unseen, unobserved, unmeasured, climate modelled derived only, man made effects on the global climate which now goes in Green alarmist climate circles under the name of the supposedly highly destructive “Climate Change.”

I asked this question of the frisky foolish filly or whatever she / he calls themselves sometime ago and only got another alarmist site in answer to my question.

So to to all those alarmists and alarmist trolls out there and anybody else who might like to have a go at answering these questions;
.
1 / Could you please clearly define and explain in your own words just exactly what is “Climate change” as defined by the alarmists and “climate change” bed wetters?

2 / And, secondly, how do we positively identify human caused “Climate change” as a distinct phenomena from the common and universal everyday type natural “Climate change” that has always been a fundamental characteristic of this World’s ongoing existence since time began?

Everywhere one wants to read today in the western media “Climate change” is mentioned as the prime reason for so many wondrously stupid decisions taken by scientists and researchers in just about every field from sociology to paleontology plus the basis for endless and deeply socially dividing political decisions and business decisions and economic predictions.

Yet not once have I ever seen a clear defined and precise definition of this all powerful and dreaded “Climate change” that is about to overtake us and extinguish Life on Earth.

Well maybe it will only extinguish Life on Earth after they show tomorrow night’s episode of the latest TV soapy. [/sarc ]

If the climate alarmists including climate alarmist scientists can’t clearly define what they believe and claim to be “Climate Change”, a “climate change” that is quite distinct from the ongoing and aeons old natural “climate change” that has always been a part and parcel of this planet’s existence, then they ;

A/ Don’t really know at all what they are talking about;
ie ; are ignorant in the extreme about the substance of and the definitions relating to their very own by now, quite spurious claims.

ie; Exhibit a gross level of hubris and arrogance allied with ignorance allied with a selfie centred cultural outlook and the hell with anybody and everybody else who might have to suffer severely so the Climate Alarmists can reach for that completely undefined and nebulous, vaporous goal of stopping that undefined, undefinable and unknown but the dreaded climate alarmist’s atheistic “Climate change”.

B / They are forcefully advocating taking dramatic and deleterious to civilised living standard’s range of actions based entirely on something they cannot define at all ie; ” Climate change”, or point to examples that are not completely paralleled by natural “climate change” of century’s long duration and therefore they quite clearly don’t know what they are talking about and what they supposedly claim to believe in.

C / Cults are the typical example of this type of human belief structure and rabidly fanatical Cults and their Cultists believers almost invariably come to a very sticky and unpleasant end.
.

And sadly as we are seeing in the Climate Change debacle and its socially destructive forces that are being inflicted and imposed on western society, for those who are not within the elitist groupings of the Climate Change cult but are not of their own free will, drawn into the cult’s web, pay a very large price indeed in human suffering.

Currently the wind turbines in S.E. Aust. are producing as low as I have ever seen. At 5 am. it was 250 MW dropping to about 150 MW at midday when production for the two Tasmanian wind farms joined the party, and with the present weather pattern it will stay low until about noon tomorrow. So all the wind farms plus the solar farms were producing a little over 200 MW at midday; that’s a lot of government subsidised investment in renewable energy sitting idle.

What to do? To prevent blackouts one has to rely on substantial back-up generation, but since the point of the renewable politics was to decrease evil “carbon footprints” how do you do this without using diesel gensets or gas turbines? More wind turbines, or solar farms, will not produce much and would be mainly idle as well, even if they covered the countryside. This solution was suggested to Tasmania by the greens for their recent electricity problem, and they wisely chose diesel and re-started a moth-balled gas turbine station at Bell Bay.

There are two practical solutions:

a. Set-up a nuclear industry based on the development of our own nuclear fuel, use in nuclear stations, its re-processing, and storage in an isolated facility west of Bourke somewhere. Don’t export much yellow cake.

b. Set-up about ten modern coal stations of about 2000 MW each which would provide the same power for half the emissions of the current stations. Don’t export all our coal for China and India to make electricity with.

The only other option is to give -up our present way of life and live with a limited availability of electricity, black-outs, cook with wood fires, no lights at night, no dish washers, no washing machines, cold showers, and so on. Not really progressive is it, but that is what the greens would have us do.

So 125 MW for all the investment by governments in renewable energy is little more than an expensive joke, a capacity factor of 0.44 %.

As for S. Aust. their turbines were producing about 25 MW only.

And yet 50% renewables by 2030 is the goal of Federal Labor, and as well the 50% figure has migrated to Victoria and Qld.!

Lets extrapolate the 125 MW figure for 50% renewables. We need approx. 10,000 MW of production from wind, or 10,000 x 3669/125 or 293,500 MW of wind turbines. No further comment is needed, apart to say it demonstrates the abysmal calibre of our politicians in supporting a nonsense.

Then, under the image untick the boxes for every State except SA, and then, above that State list, untick the box Total. So now you have just those wind plants for SA, the coloured scrawl at the bottom, and the thick black line for the SA total generation.

Note when that spike occurred, from around 7PM till 3AM and even that was only to 400MW, you know, when everyone is tucked up in bed asleep, the period of highest sorry, lowest power consumption.

At the top right of the page along that black menu bar, and at the top right, you can change the date to any day you wish.

Tony:
did you see that bit about the idle turbines drawing 50 MW? For 604 turbines that averages 82-83kW per turbine, a lot more than thought. One explanation was that they were having to heat the oil and control cabinets because temperatures were zero.

Of course the turbines shut down at 40℃ on hot days when demand is highest, so blackouts are coming if we get a hot summer.

You can also view the output for a month with the links on the right or by editing the url for the appropriate year and month (or even jump to a day in the past without having to plod through the selector)

Another trick that lets you see a state’s output more clearly is to unselect all states except the one you want and then unselect that as well. Voila – the state’s individual wind farms disappear but the SubtTotal is still presented (as long as you leave that selected). I think this is a bug in the javascript but it can be handy.

We have more than enough coal for ourselves and our Asian customers. We export very little thermal coal to China and India who are both large producers in their own right. Japan has always been our largest customer (tor at least 40 years) and South Korea is also very important now.

South Australian NEM prices have averaged about $360MWh so far this month…

That’s the wholesale price for electricity ….. at the grid.

That’s what the retailers pay for the electricity that they then onsell to consumers. It’s the combined price for all power generation with the units which are online, all of them.

Be aware that when you compare that to what you pay at retail, that AVERAGE (wholesale) cost of $360/MW comes in at 36 cents per KWH.

So, in actual fact, the retailers are buying their power for a greater cost than what they can sell it to all consumers.

What I would like to know is how can those retailers afford to keep that up. I know that there’s swings and roundabouts, but seriously, this is an average cost for 20 days so far, with some days (two of them this Month so far) with the cost at $1,000/MWH plus for the Peak Period, (7AM till 10PM) with one day having those 15 hours average cost at $1,832.37/MWH

I wonder if those retailers are being, umm, subsidised by the State Government, you know, in desperation to keep the power on, because if those retailers go under, the State has the potential to go black.

That’s something the State Government just would not allow, because immediately people will actually start to ask the (right) questions about ….. wind power, and then the jig will be up.

Tony, they obviously buy it when its really cheep; keep in a bucket out the back and then when the price goes up, they mix a shandy of cheep + less cheep and plug it in … should work!

Making a market for something that flows around at the speed of light and has to be used the millisecond it is produced is the most weird concept even to be born out of the brains of economists (spot the oxymoron).

Pssst .. dont tell the Greens but an awful lot of coal in NSW and Victoria is continuously being shoveled-in for when bludging states like ACT and SA find the sun not shining or the wind is stopped. Electricity does not travel free – a lot of electrons are lost as heat and radiation from the network, getting the filthy energy from those CO2-belching monsters that actually keep everybody warm and in a job all the way to SA.

Just imagine trying to run a business the same way the South Australian power grid operates.
You employ ten people but most of the time only six people turn up to work.
On some days ten people do turn up, but four of them might walk off the job at lunch time.
To counter this, you employ fourteen people.
Makes perfect sense . . .

I, for one, am thankful the South Australians are selflessly demonstrating how hopeless renewables are on a large scale. We should thank them for sacrificing their economic well-being to provide us this valuable experimental data.

And don’t worry, fellow sandgropers, we will continue to fund the crow eaters through our GST donations…

We have had some ‘interesting’ weather this month with storms lashing the populated parts of the State (and elsewhere but that doesn’t count). The winds have been very strong with gusts over 100 kph so the wind turbines have shut down, and then there have been calm periods with little wind when the wind turbines have shut down. There have been a few hours when the winds have been right for the turbines and you can read about them in the (heaving bosom type) prose in the ‘renewables are great’ outlets.
The Australian is NOT among the latter and has been blasting the incompetence and stupidity of the State Government and the State Minister of Energy, who is also the State Treasurer. Apart from being widely known as a dill (nickname Silly Koot) Tom Koutsantonis seems to be rather poor at arithmetic, but has memorised the State motto – it’s not our fault, it’s those eastern States. Send more money.
His “explanation” is that the problem is due to a lack of capacity in the electricity interconnections to Victoria therefore NSW (and Qld. says our Premier) should build some to SA so we have access to more coal fired electricity.

The station at Port Augusta (the last coal fired one) shut down in May before the major inter-connector upgrade was ready. It still won’t be enough to avoid blackouts this coming summer on hot days. Those wind turbines shut down at 40℃ when demand is highest. I lost electricity for just over 28 hours last week but at least had gas heating and cooking. I need to install a generator before summer, and the way things are going it might produce electricity cheaper than that available AT TIMES from the mains.

When a single buyer purchases something–like electricity–it is called monopsonic purchasing. It faces a terrible quandary which is right out of the economics 101 textbooks: Viz. The more it wants to buy, the higher the price and further, it has to pay everyone the same new and higher price that it pays the last seller. If it does not pay everyone the same as the last seller, producers/sellers can just shut down and re-open and thereby become the last seller

I must try and find the total underemployment and unemployment figures fior each State. Currently the whole Australian figure is 18 percent. I suspect the Individual State figures will be scary. To look at just the government ABS figures I suspect are very misleading!

Looks like current SA “management” has made the obvious mistake of not listening to anyone who has an inkling of how a power grid works. RIP ETSA?? Pity help Oz if Shorten gets to live his renewable fantasy. Maybe someone in Canberra is watching? No point in having a NEM if the players can opt out.

Well the whole period of Labor since 2010 has been the less preferred of the two parties for the state and held power.

2010
Lab 26 Seats 48.4% TPP
Lib 18 Seats 51.6% TPP

2014
Lab 23 Seats 47% TPP
Lib 22 Seats 53% TPP

In part this could be partially off-set by the 2 independent seats that were mostly liberal in TPP but 1 or 2 % in difference in TPP should make a difference of a few seats not near parity. Labor is probably leaving an absolute basket case economy for when they eventually run out of voters patience…. then they can blame it on the Libs from in opposition.

I was told that according to rumour, Adelaide Brighton Cement monitors the spot electricity price constantly and above a certain price they start shutting down parts of production and sending people home.

Now disclaimer – the guy who mentioned this to me did work within the electricity industry but still a reasonable amount of Chinese Whisper going on here.

It’s the same sort of arrangement that the smelters and pulp mills had with Hydro Tasmania which allowed Tasmania to (just) survive the BassLink outage until the rains came in May (along with the gas turbines hurriedly returned to service and diesel generators brought in).

There was a fault back in 2012 and BassLink are blaming Hydro Tas for excessive high rates when exporting (this was during the period of The Carbon Tax). Hydro are saying it was the result of faulty temperature equipment. It seems likely that the high import rates in December 2015 caused the previously damaged section to fail.

Note that there were still some exports in December so the low water argument quite literally doesn’t hold water

They are also using DC current (cheaper) instead of AC. Probably also more failure-prone. Definately why they were unable to identify the location of the fault without physically pulling up the cable and cutting it.

Cheaper? In terms of transmission loss (or else larger conductor cross section) and tower size, yes. In terms of other infrastruture, no – the thyristors alone that can handle the inversion and rectification currents and voltages are costly, let alone the systems needed to control them. Then there is all the filtering needed to prevent radio noise and line harmonics. There’s not much that is cheap about HVDC but beyond certain distances, especially when underwater transmission is involved, I guess you could say it’s cheaper.

The failure of the cable itself would not be greater for AC vs DC – a point of slightly higher resistance will be prone to localised overheating in either case. The end stations are definitely more prone to failure than the relatively straightforward substations needed for AC interconnectors but then they are also far more flexible for directing flow.

Signal reflections were almost certainly used to find the approximate fault location else they would have had to drag the whole thing up

Actually its all been privatised and the rules are part of the NATIONAL market.

The fact that the local govt has been stupid enough to enourage all this wind install is a secondary matter.

What’s worse and most stupid of all is that not only has that coal fired power plant been shut down – it’s been sold, and is now being disassembled for its new owner to take overseas. NO CHANCE AT ALL OF A RESTART.

But remember this is all done under NATIONAL electricity market rules.

20 Jul: Australian: Business blows up as turbines suck more power than they generate
Wind turbines in South Australia were using more power than they generated during the state’s electricity crisis, which has prompted major businesses to threaten shutdowns and smaller firms to consider moving interstate.
The sapping of power by the turbines during calm weather on July 7 at the height of the ­crisis, which has caused a price surge, shows just how unreliable and ­intermittent wind power is for a state with a renewable ­energy mix of more than 40 per cent. Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox ­yesterday said the rise in prices, ­already the highest in the country, had disrupted industry and served as a warning for the rest of the ­­­­nat­ion. “That is a serious blow to energy users across SA and has disrupted supply chains upon which thousands of jobs depend,” he said…
Federal Energy Minster Josh Frydenberg declined to be interviewed yesterday, but said he would convene a Council of Australian Governments meeting as soon as possible.
Not everyone is unhappy — farmer Peter Ebsary hosts four turbines from the Snowtown wind farm in South Australia’s mid north. The wind farm, owned by TrustPower, is the state’s largest.
“We get a financial return and don’t have to do anything … we just sit back and collect the money as long as the wind blows,” he said.http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/business-blows-up-as-turbines-suck-more-power-than-they-generate/news-story/76f0fdb110c998fe959bfb343c1d370a

As SA voters vote in their government they deserve all the energy pain that is inflicted upon themselves. I would like to see them go a week without Victorian power. There would be street riots by the end of the week.

They are caught out by the Labor created gerrymander meaning the electoral boundaries are fixed to favour Labor sitting MPs so that in too many electorates Labor is entrenched unless voters well above 50 per cent vote against them.

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want & deserve to get it good & hard ” – Mencken

I guess the unemployed of SA & the taxpayers of Australia may yet come to understand the “knowledge” crafted by the CFR/TC/Rockefeller Education Foundation ( K12) & enthusiastically chorused into our consciousness by the conceited MSM is pure Orwellinan Minitrue Propaganda.

No chance – while unnaturally conservative the Amish are very, very prosperous, and good citizens.
They dislike adornment, but use energy as they see appropriate. Their farms are models of profitable
environmental probity with no noise. They are doing well in Indiana and Pennsylvania, thank you, and after many
years of gaining acceptance and respect probably see no need to emigrate to chaos.

I think the pols in SA would find themselves very embarrassed, if they could feel shame, should a good example of
commonsense environmentally sound farming move to their midst.

They are the Amish. And I don’t think they would appreciate being called a cult, nor would they move to South Australia simply because the power situation there is getting worse.

The Amish are hard working people who in no way meet the definition of a cult. Another definition here. They are completely Christian in spite of the fact that you and I do not understand why they live the way they do. However, I envy them their strong family and community ties, cooperative attitude and self-sufficiency. Those are attributes sorely missing from modern society.

That their preferred lifestyle does not include use of electricity or the internal combustion engine may make them the one group of people who come out of the collapse of modern civilization in one piece.

I can tell you that their produce is not organic. They definitely use pesticides. They also use ‘night dirt’ from their toilets to fertilize with. Local people tend not to buy the produce around here. Outsiders do, thinking that it is organic.
Remember they have no running water to wash themselves (the tend to stink), or their utensils with. So do you want to buy baked goods or produce produced under these conditions?
Their baskets and other things they make is fine. I admire the independence from government. They can keep their produce for themselves thanks!

Have been watching this site for a while (lurking) but I feel I may have something to contribute from time to time so will start by commenting on wind generators and the way they probably work.
Most wind turbines are asynchronous generator’s which are actually electric motors which when over driven by the blades power, work as generators, see link.http://xn--drmstrre-64ad.dk/wp-content/wind/miller/windpower%20web/en/tour/wtrb/async.htm
This means that to work they have to be synched to the grid first as the wind speed comes up and it’s the grid which spins up the blades so they can then get the wind to overdrive the turbine (motor).
This also means that in variable lower winds the blades can actually just be being spun by power from the grid and this would account for some of this power use.

I don’t have a problem with SA moving more and more to wind power. I just don’t want them to suck up the power from other states when they find out that wind power is not a reliable source of power. Let them have blackouts galore. It’s the only way to teach anyone the real lesson. The people there will eventually wake up and realise they have been taken for fools.

Yes, but as has been pointed out, many people suffer unnecessarily during sudden power losses. The SA power suppliers have had to apologise to those on life support systems several times in the last few months; people become unxpectedly “stuck” in elevators between floors; traffic in Adelaide becomes instantly chaotic; supermarkets worry that they will have to junk the (un)refrigerated foodstuffs … on and on.

Yes, but the voters of SA have elected the government they want. If they don’t like to have black-outs unnecessarily then they should not have voted in that government as they all knew it’s stance on power generation. As an analogy, if they were totally abhorrent to increased taxes but at the election they knew party A has declared they will increase taxes significantly while Party B does not and Party A is elected, the people have no cause to complain when taxes are increased. They should shut up and take the pain. Besides, if SA sucks up too much power from other states because of their stupid power generation policies then the people in those other states will suffer unnecessarily if they have blackouts. I know stupidity is contagious but we must at least try to contain it. Let SA suffer on its own.

19 Jul: UK Telegraph: Emily Gosden: Offshore wind farms in doubt after RSPB (The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) gets planning consent quashed
Multi-billion pound plans to build a series of wind farms off the coast of Scotland are in doubt after the RSPB won a legal challenge to quash their planning consent over fears they would kill too many birds.
A judge ruled in favour of the RSPB’s claim that there were flaws in way the Scottish Government granted consent for the Neart na Gaoithe, Inch Cape, SeaGreen Alpha and SeaGreen Bravo wind farms, which together would have comprised 335 turbines generating up to 2.3 GW of power…
The £2bn, 450MW Neart na Gaoithe project was already facing the axe after a subsidy contract from the UK Government was revoked in May as the developer was unable to invest due to the ongoing legal challenge.
The fate of the other three projects, which had yet to secure subsidy contracts, is also now unclear, with developers likely to have to re-apply for planning consent, unless the Scottish Government lodges and wins an appeal against the ruling…http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/07/19/offshore-wind-farms-in-doubt-after-rspb-gets-planning-consent-qu/

The great irony is that the RSPB have erected a turbine at their headquarters, The Bird Sanctuary , Sandy Lodge, Bedfordshire , England. It is expected to generate about a third of the total power used by the organisation nationally. Of course, it does not directly supply all their premises but feeds into the grid at a good FIT, whereas their usage is paid at standard rates. A very profitable reversal of “not in my back yard” . The hypocrasy is breathtaking , which is what their turbine does to bats, which are not, of course , birds.

The wind turbine industry’s parasitic load draw down on the Grid when turbines aren’t generating enough power or no power at all to maintain their own internal systems as well as the turbine farm’s grid compatibility systems needed to phase in with the Grid frequencies and voltages is another of the wind industry’s utterly corrupt scams backed by a gross dissembling and supported by a whole litany of lies that are a well recognised in wind power skeptic circles everywhere as a fundamental characteristic of the wind turbine industry globally.

There is after all a few hundred billion dollars of public funds there for the taking from ignorant, OPM dispensing and often sleazy political operators complete with large brown paper bags with addresses on them to places like the Brunei Banks or Seychelles or many of the Caribbean Island nations.

It seems that in most countries the Wind turbine industry gets paid for the power it produces and increasingly in places like Germany, Denmark and the UK , sometimes for the power it doesn’t produce when strong winds are blowing and there is no use for the excess wind power that is then capable of being generated .
So some of the wind turbine operators are PAID to shut their turbines down for the duration.

On the not paid for ,[ ie; free un-metered grid power,] parasitic drawdowns of power from the grid when the Wind turbines are incapable of generating enough power to run their own internal systems, there are a highly varied range of commentary on the internet plus loads and loads of wind industry and green propaganda, all of it extremely biased some of which can be pursued through the whittled down number of links I have supplied below.
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1 / Australian source; Parasitic power: Dollars blowing in the wind

Now this quote below might surprise a whole lot of readers plus ignorant of the realities of wind power, pollies if it was pointed out to them.

Every wind farm also needs backup power to cover the 65%-plus of wind generating capacity [ edit; The figure I have repeatedly seen is that a back up of 80% of the turbine's rated generating capacity is required to cover the intermittency and unpredictability of wind turbine generated power ] that is lost because the wind is not blowing, or blowing such a gale that the turbines have to shut down.

In Australia, most backup is provided by coal or gas plants which are forced to operate intermittently to offset the erratic winds. Coal plants and many gas plants cannot switch on and off quickly but must maintain steam pressure and “spinning reserve” in order to swing in quickly when the fickle wind drops.
This causes grid instability and increases the carbon dioxide produced per unit of electricity.This waste should be debited to the wind farm that caused it.

Wind turbines also consume energy from the grid when they are idle – for lubrication, heating, cooling, lights, metering, hydraulic brakes, energising the electro-magnets, even to keep the blades turning lazily (to prevent warping) and to maintain line voltage when there is no wind.A one-month study of the Wonthaggi wind farm in Australia found that the facility consumed more electricity than it produced for 16% of the period studied.
A detailed study in USA showed that 8.3% of total wind energy produced was consumed by the towers themselves.
This is not usually counted in the carbon equation.

I have long been trying to nail down how much electricity a wind turbine consumes.
The wind industry seems quite reluctant to publish this.
As an example, in the V82 Life Cycle Assessment they lump all the manufacturing, operation, transportation etc. together into a 20-year lifetime total of 3392 mw-h, not willing to break it out.
Luckily, the UMinn’s reports include negative production numbers when the wind isn’t blowing enough to produce – about 3.5 m/s.
Each day they listed the minimum production, along with the minimum wind speed.
UMinn didn’t reveal the time increments, but fully 85% of the days during the 3 years had a negative-production period.
I graphed the results:

Graph

The above chart shows the minimum productions plotted against the minimum wind speeds.
As you might expect, whenever the wind speed is above the 3.5 m/s cut-in speed the turbine starts producing, but not getting consistently into positive territory until about 4.5 m/s.

Notice the results when the wind doesn’t get above 3.5 m/s – typically there’s a MINUS 50kw of production.

This is power that must be supplied from the grid just to keep the turbine in business.

And 50kw seems to be what the turbine uses to stay alive in good weather.
In the winter it gets slightly higher – the highest negative numbers were in the 80 kw range.

So, finally, we have a measurement of just how much electricity they consume!
50 kw is quite a bit higher than my previous findings, which originated in industry statements and cash flow calculations.
Recall that the average Danish turbine produces about 376 kw (1650 * .228).So a V82 operating in Denmark consumes roughly 13% of what it produces.
[ edit; In line with my reading from elsewhere ]
No wonder they want to keep this quiet.

Large wind turbines require a large amount of energy to operate.
Other electricity plants generally use their own electricity, and the difference between the amount they generate and the amount delivered to the grid is readily determined.
Wind plants, however, use electricity from the grid, which does not appear to be accounted for in their output figures.
At the facility in Searsburg, Vermont, for example, it is apparently not even metered and is completely unknown [click here].*
The manufacturers of large turbines — for example, Vestas, GE, and NEG Micon — do not include electricity consumption in the specifications they provide.

Among the wind turbine functions that use electricity are the following:†

1 / yaw mechanism (to keep the blade assembly perpendicular to the wind; also to untwist the electrical cables in the tower when necessary) — the nacelle (turbine housing) and blades together weigh 92 tons on a GE 1.5-MW turbine

2 / blade-pitch control (to keep the rotors spinning at a regular rate)

4 / heating the blades — this may require 10%-20% of the turbine’s nominal (rated) power

5 / heating and dehumidifying the nacelle — according to Danish manufacturer Vestas, “power consumption for heating and dehumidification of the nacelle must be expected during periods with increased humidity, low temperatures and low wind speeds”

6 / oil heater, pump, cooler, and filtering system in gearbox

7 / hydraulic brake (to lock the blades in very high wind)

8 / thyristors (to graduate the connection and disconnection between generator and grid) — 1%-2% of the energy passing through is lost

9 / magnetizing the stator — the induction generators used in most large grid-connected turbines require a “large” amount of continuous electricity from the grid to actively power the magnetic coils around the asynchronous “cage rotor” that encloses the generator shaft; at the rated wind speeds, it helps keep the rotor speed constant, and as the wind starts blowing it helps start the rotor turning (see next item); in the rated wind speeds, the stator may use power equal to 10% of the turbine’s rated capacity, in slower winds possibly much more

10 / using the generator as a motor (to help the blades start to turn when the wind speed is low or, as many suspect, to maintain the illusion that the facility is producing electricity when it is not,‡ particularly during important site tours or noise testing (keeping the blades feathered, ie, quiet)) — it seems possible that the grid-magnetized stator must work to help keep the 40-ton blade assembly spinning, along with the gears that increase the blade rpm some 50 times for the generator, not just at cut-in (or for show in even less wind) but at least some of the way up towards the full rated wind speed; it may also be spinning the blades and rotor shaft to prevent warping when there is no wind§
.

Could it be that at times each turbine consumes more than 50% of its rated capacity in its own operation?! If so, the plant as a whole — which may produce only 25% of its rated capacity annually — would be using (for free!) twice as much electricity as it produces and sells. An unlikely situation perhaps, but the industry doesn’t publicize any data that proves otherwise; incoming power is apparently not normally recorded.

—————–

From Ireland a quite extraordinary set of Eirgrid power usage graphs that “indicate” or maybe “perhaps” is a better word, on just how much power the wind turbines are drawing from the Irish Grid and when they are drawing it.

This goes into a lot more detail as to where and how these power used as the Wind turbine parasitic load grid drawdown are used both in the individual turbine’s systems and also in the various grid voltage and phase and frequency aligning systems that are a part of every wind farm that is hooked into a grid when drawing the [ unmetered, unpaid for ? ] power from the Grid they are nominal power suppliers to.

@ROM, as a retired engineer from the Electric Utility Industry, let me tell you another well buried secret.

EVERY (may be a few exceptions) power plant, Generator has two meters.
One measures the power going out it measures the power at the output of the generator before any house loads are consumed, leached off, or disapitated away. It will thus provide the operators an accurate indication of the exact power generated. This is necessary so that they will not exceed name plate rating. This is necessary as occasionally there may be high VARs (Volts Amps Reactive). Generators also have a limit on the maxim,um VAR load. if power is at 100% then the VARs must be lower than at 90, 80 or 50%. This meter is also used to tell the world how much power they generate. All of the numbers telling you that this Coal, gas, nuclear plant generated 10 GW of power over this period of time come from this meter.
The second meter measures the power that the power plant uses. This only measures the power used in generation of electricity and lighting inside the power plant. This consists of the power needed for the computers, controls, pumps, coal conveyor belts, building security lighting (inside/outside) HVAC for operating equipment, heating for oil, bearings, freeze protection of process pipping, and all of the stuff needed to MAKE POWER. Administrative purpose power (offices, office HVAC, office computers, etc) is NOT on this meter, (Usually) it is on a third meter.

One reason for this is that the power generated is usually at a much higher voltage than the power needs of the power producing equipment and is delivered directly to the high voltage power grid. The plant, on the other hand needs power even when shut down, as you have listed above. Rather than having a separate set of voltage reducing transformers for the “Plant Loads” they pull the power off of the normal power distribution system just like a house, store or factory would and have a meter for this consumption and actually put it on the books and use it as a tax deduction, at full cost.

So when Slippery Rock Power plant tells you made 10 GW (over some period of time) they do not, NOT, subtract meter two from meter one.
The same is true fro every Wind Turbine I have ever seen, other than the small home handyman type that only make a few hundred watts/hour.
What this means is that EVER (almost) Wind turbine data set you read has absolutely ZERO accounting for the amount of power that they have leached off, parasites, or consumed in the making of the power they tell you that they are delivering to the grid. They are actually providing what the say the provided LESS the amount needed to generate that power. Typical numbers of Wind Turbine facility loads are about 10% of Name Plate Generation capacity 24/7/365. If you question that consider how large the AC would need to be to cool off the nacelle at just 50% power on an average summer day. Then add the power needed for the hydraulics systems and all of the stuff you, and others, listed.

Now the the scary part – The average wind turbine only generates about 25% “Gross” of its name plate potential over a one year average. When you subtract 10 from 25 that 25% Gross that leaves you with a “Net” delivered power of 15% of the Name plate rating over a one year period.

I can’t find it right now, but there was an article on the internet written by a power dispatcher in Scotland that took the annual data for the off shore wind turbines. His analysis showed, and the data backed up his claim, that over a one year period the Wind turbines actually had a NET Negative effect on the grid of about 8% of the name plate rated power. The major reason is that the units had to have deicing on the blades and nacelle and the lubrication systems needed extensive freeze protection in addition to the normal ambient heating for the nacelle in the winter – about 5 months. All large power hogs.

Now the the scary part – The average wind turbine only generates about 25% “Gross” of its name plate potential over a one year average. When you subtract 10 from 25 that 25% Gross that leaves you with a “Net” delivered power of 15% of the Name plate rating over a one year period.

Your comment and the figures you supplied in the above quote that subtracting the Wind Turbines required amounts of its generated power to keep its systems operational leaves Turbines only delivering what is in reality only a nominal amount of power to the grid compared to the operators claims is directly in line with calculations I saw last night on another blog post that came to the same conclusions as yours and with almost identical numbers.
.

Just for interest, Germany’s immense array of land based wind turbines have an overall annual power generating “Capacity” factor of a literally miserable 18% of their total rated generating Capacity / capabilities.

As an old now retired farmer, if I bought a new and very expensive tractor that only gave a maximum of 18% of the power that the manufacturers claimed for it , there would be hell to pay and a manufacturer forced to do some very hard explaining in the courts as to why their product was so lacking in power and why they shouldn’t fell the full force of the laws on deliberately false and deliberately deceptive advertised claims of power output.

It actually gets worse over a period of years for a wind turbine’s generated output as wear and tear on the components mount up .

But worst of all I would think, based on my knowledge of how the Composite fibre construction in gliders continue to cure and shrink and change over a couple of decades which leads to lower performance as the critical to performance wing profiles change, Wind turbines which use blade construction materials and techniques that are very similar to FRP [ Fibre Reinforced Plastics ] glider / Sail plane construction, cure and therefore change over a number of years and so lose the critical to performance fine details of their aerofoil shapes and a consequent loss of the ability to extract energy from the airflow with a increasing fall off in performance over time and a consequent economic income earning fall off leading to a possible/ probable albeit carefully hidden economic losses.
.
ie; So after creaming off the maximum of profits, sell the whole bloody wind farm set up to some stupid wood duck somewhere in some wealthy Superannuation fund before it all goes real bad.
And its happening!
———-
To quote from; http://windfarmrealities.org/?p=1284

To me, the most important new news from this study was the surprising (at least until you start thinking about it) reduction in Capacity Factor of about 2% per year that wind turbines are subject to.
This loss of efficiency is normally hidden behind the year-to-year variability of the winds and the consequent variability of the generator output.
John normalized the average wind speed and the consequent output (recalling that it is a cubed relationship) and the loss in CF stands out like a sore thumb.
.Graph
.

Intrigued, I ran the numbers for Denmark and obtained a fairly consistent 1.5% annual loss.
And when you are lucky to start at a CF of 28% (as Denmark did here), 2% per year is a bunch.

Actually, the comment about the turbines being driven when the wind is low for the sake of public perception is wrong – there is a real engineering requirement for this.

The bearings supporting the shaft for the turbine are under incredible load due to the rotor being cantilevered off the nacelle. Massive bearings that are capable of supporting this as a static load could be used but then the frictional losses would greatly lower the efficiency of the turbines so the capacity factors would plummet. Instead, the turbines are engineered to a fine balance where the load capacity of the bearings is marginal to minimize friction hence maximizing output. This basically means the shaft must turn continually else the bearing rollers brinell into the races at the highest load points and the whole thing locks up

In high winds, the brakes must still allow the rotor to slowly move but who’s going to stand around in a gale watching turbines doing nothing? Or maybe sustained high winds leads to premature failure. It would make an interesting study.

Wind turbines are built to minimal specifications which become more and more critical as they are scaled up. If bearing materials are improved, they will make the new bearings smaller for improved output rather than increasing the lifespan by allowing the bearings to be stronger. This is due to the diffuse nature of wind energy so they really are running on borrowed time.

Also needed to prevent “Rotor Bow.” There is a massive amount of copper winding’s on the rotor. This will cause a Bow to the Rotor shaft unless it is barred. The term is derived from the process of physically using a long bar to rotate the rotor a few degrees once an hour. This has been replaced by motor operated mechanical methods throughout the industry, but still called barred or barring. Is needed in Wind Turbines in that weight at the top of the tower in the Nacelle is restricted to the minimum. Thus shafts are as small as possible and made of as light of material possible to perform the needed function.
A small motor coupled through a significant speed reduction gear train can rotate the generator a fraction of a degree per hour, prevent bowing and weigh only a few pounds, even less. Saving many more pounds of shaft weight.

19 Jul: BusinessStandardIndia: Shreya Jai: 40% of wind power capacity under cloud
Leading wind power producers are facing problems over payments and demand that affect close to 11,000 Mw, or 40 per cent of the wind power generating capacity in the country.
Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Maharashtra are yet to clear payments to wind power producers.
These states, along with Madhya Pradesh (MP), have also asked power producers to curtail generation by 50 per cent or more. Wind power producers operating in these states include Suzlon, Enercon, Gamesa, ReNew Power, Hero Future Energies, Orange Wind Energy, NuPower Renewable, NSL Renewable and Inox Energy. Rajasthan has asked producers to curtail generation by close to 40 per cent and Tamil Nadu by 20-30 per cent. The period of peak wind power generation matches peak demand during summer. “Lack of inter-state transmission capacity is hurting our generation plans. The consumer cannot make most of the surplus wind power available during summer,” said an industry executive…
From next year, the industry will stop receiving the 50 paise per unit generation-based incentive as well. “This will affect the financial health of these companies. A chunk of projects will face problems in financial closure,”Kumar added.
Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan are not signing new power purchase agreements, leaving investors in a limbo…
The Maharashtra government was also mulling a surcharge on captive wind power generation, said companies operating in the state…http://wap.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/40-of-wind-power-capacity-under-cloud-116071900030_1.html

14 Jul: GlobeNewswire: Global Wind Turbine Operations and Maintenance Market Propelled by Growing Focus on Renewable Energy: MRRSE
According to the report, the value of the global wind turbine operations and maintenance market is projected to increase from US$9.3 bn in 2014 to US$20.6 bn in 2023, at a strong CAGR of 8.80% from 2015 to 2023. This growth can be attributed to a number of factors such as rise in the number of gearbox and generator failures, increasing presence of financial institutions and private investors as owners of wind farms, surge in the number of aging wind turbines, and expanding share of offshore turbines in the wind energy mix. In contrast, escalating cost of logistics and lack of skilled labor threaten to hamper the development of the global wind turbine operations and maintenance market…
Wind turbine O&M services also constitute scheduled maintenance, unscheduled maintenance, remote monitoring, and asset administration. Some of the major breakdown-prone components of wind turbines include gear boxes, generators, rotor blades, drive trains, and brakes…ETChttps://globenewswire.com/news-release/2016/07/14/855910/0/en/Global-Wind-Turbine-Operations-and-Maintenance-Market-Propelled-by-Growing-Focus-on-Renewable-Energy-MRRSE.html

20 Jul: AP: Wind farm foe rezones to fight proposed facility near Elwood
As wind farm developers seek to meet the U.S. Department of Energy’s goal of 20 percent renewable energy production in Indiana by 2030, some residents in targeted areas are fighting back in inventive ways.
Two decades ago, Linda Jones moved from the bustling city life of Indianapolis to a small homestead just outside of Middletown in Henry County. But after three wind energy companies put in bids to operate in the county, Jones worries that her bucolic prairie view will be ruined by wind turbines.
“We had a display recently at a gathering, and they were showing the scale of what a two-story home looks like beside a 500-foot turbine. They are really imposing,” she said.
The noise and flickering shadows that are caused by turning rotor blades also concerned Jones, she said, because her adult daughter suffers from migraines caused by flashing lights. She worried that if a turbine went up near her house, her daughter wouldn’t be able to visit as often.
So Jones began going to the Middletown’s meetings on wind farm proposals, and learned that although the “offset” — the distance required between homes and turbines — was 1,500 feet for land zoned residential, it was only 550 feet for land zoned as agriculture…
Instead of fighting to change zoning and setback laws, as people in some other counties across Indiana have done because there is no statewide setback law, Jones decided to petition to have her property, surrounded by farmland, rezoned as residential. She was awarded the request in a 6-to-1 vote by the Middletown council…
A group of residents in Rush County, the location of a proposed 65-turbine farm by APEX Clean Energy, are fighting to change a zoning agreement that has allowed wind farms in the area. APEX officials said in a statement that such a restriction would essentially kill wind energy development in Rush County.
In Eastern Indiana, Fayette County residents have sued county commissioners and another developer to stop a wind farm. And Marshall County has set a moratorium on wind farm development…
Wind farms do have their supporters, many landowners among them. Wind farm developers pay an average of $5,000 a year to lease land for each turbine…
More than 1,000 turbines tower over the Hoosier landscape, mostly in the northern half of Indiana, generating 1,893 megawatts of power — roughly the energy produced by three average-size coal plants…http://www.chron.com/news/article/Wind-farm-foe-rezones-to-fight-proposed-facility-8397147.php

How would you like to be an underground miner or a copper smelter operator at Olympic Dam when the power goes off?
More Chilean copper must be looking more and more attractive to BHPB.
Goodbye South Aus. You may well get what you deserve.

The upside of this type of catastrophe – it may turn out to be “the lesson the western world had to have”.

19 Jul: NP Telegraph: Tammy Bain: Cherry Co. wind farm proposal gets blowback
Mundorf said the proposed wind farm would have 30 windmills, each more than 300 feet tall. The farm would take up several thousand acres of the Sandhills…
Carolyn Semin heads the opposition group with her husband LeRoy. She estimates the number of opponents to be in the hundreds, from all across Cherry County.
Twice a year, Semin said, she watches cranes migrate over her rural Kilgore home. She also described an eagle’s nest and neighboring wetlands. Geese nest “all over the place,” Semin said, adding that all of the wildlife would be affected by the wind farm’s construction…
Semin said the influx of trucks that would carry the wind turbines, as well as the disruption to vulnerable habitat, would negate the benefit. She added that producing energy to be sold elsewhere wouldn’t be worth the cost of disrupting the unique Sandhills environment…
***The chairman of the planning commission, George Johnson, planned to recuse himself from the vote, as his son heads the company that is seeking the permit, Scott said…http://www.nptelegraph.com/news/local_news/cherry-co-wind-farm-proposal-gets-blowback/article_811e0172-4e34-11e6-a298-7747c39ea2b3.html

The general social failures caused by energy missteps demonstrate that the worst aspect of intrusive government may be the inappropriate allocation of capital. Ordinary graft, corruption, greed and waste take a chunk out of this year’s revenues. Capital sends thing in the wrong direction for many years at huge cost, and denies proper investment for many years at perhaps greater cost, and has follow-ons of misery that ripple through our social fabric for years.

A crooked politican can be removed from office and, if neccessary, ridden out of town on a rail. I would say jailed, but we know that doesn’t happen.

There will be a battle for funds when it comes time to tear down those rusting, no-longer-rotating eyesores we have festooned our landscapes with. Another overcharge for the rate-payers, I’ll wager, and today’s proponents will be nowhere to be found, or doing the I-did-not-enable-green-energy-polka.

I believe for the good of all the people on the earth Australia and Germany must stay the course!

Keep building those wind towers and PV sites.
Keep subsidizing the greens.
Keep doing it until about 15 years of GDP equivalent in cash has been wasted.
Keep at it until the old are dying from cold or heat.
Keep at it until the sick die from failed life-support.
Keep at it until schools have to operate on regular black-outs.
Keep at it until double digit % of work at companies shut down while waiting for power.

Keep at it and your economies are in the shitter.

Then the people there WILL finally revolt and be real pissed off.

Pissed off enough that the rest of the world will stop and take notice.
Pissed off enough so that all this BS will be done.

Then we will get back to cleaned coal,
back to NG,
back to nukes and maybe by then we will have Thorium nukes and we will NEVA’ EVA’ again have to argue this BS.

Using, or attempting to use Wind and solar to replace coal and gas fired power, is a joke, a very expensive one.

I would ask the duds that flog this garbage : how much will all our renewable expenditure reduce the global temperature by?

The answer of course is ‘nothing’.

But isn’t that the reason for all the renewable rackets? To reduce the temp of our overheated planet?

Well, if you believe that, then you believe anything…. Hence the birth of the ‘true b’lver’ of unwavering faith and straight jacket candidacy.

Anymore than a few percent renewables being fed into the grid overloads or underloads the system and puts stress on both the grid and conventional power generators trying to adapt to gusts of wind and surges of solar power from the sun going in and out of cloud cover.

It will only ever work properly on a technical level when the power generated can be efficiently stored to then be used on demand as required.

Imagine if our water system only worked when it rained because we had no dam storage!

This stupidity is currently being applied to the renewable fiasco.

Power Storage is everything, not power generation.

Also Wind turbines in particular use more power to manufacture, transport, erect and maintain than the power they generate over their expected life span….an inefficient scam, not to mention spoiling our coastlines and being only efficient at bird killing and making noise!

Wind and Solar are only practical at present for Remote areas that are off grid with their own battery storage systems.

These systems are very expensive because of battery life, but expensive power in remote areas is still better than no power!

And I would know because I have lived in a remote area and have had such an off grid system for the last 25 years.

Anybody that thinks that such a system is comparable to coal/gas grid power is delusional!

Egor,
I agree with the points you make. (I have a remote area power supply also).
I would add that if commercial grid storage became viable, (the renewable industry is sweating on this, by viable I mean costing less to store a unit of energy than to produce and deliver it on peak), then baseload power stands to gain more efficiencies from this than renewables. The grid would be more efficient(disseminated storage) and on peak power cost would be reduced so renewables would find it harder to compete.

“…In 2014–15, total imports from Victoria to South Australia exceeded total exports from South Australia to Victoria about four-fold (2,091 GWh imported, 502 GWh exported). Total imports from Victoria represented approximately 17% of South Australian operational consumption (as presented in Section 2.2), while net imports (total imports less total exports) accounted for around 13%. In 2014–15, total imports increased by 4% compared with 2014–15, total exports increased by 49%, and net imports decreased by 5%…”

Where’s Julia when we need her? She claimed to know exactly why there were high prices and was going to fix it for us.

JULIA Gillard has unveiled a plan to reform the electricity sector, vowing to save households up to $250 a year on their power bills.

Ms Gillard said under the current system there was a “perverse incentive” for electricity companies to keep “gold-plating” or overinvesting in poles and wires in the system and keep passing on the full cost to consumers.

Hey, Josh Freidenberg, environment and energy are two sides of the same coin – switch off fossil fuels and switch on to renewables.
Barbara Fraser, Burwood published in The Age newspaper today 21 Jul 2016.

How can anyone explain reality to people like Barbara Fraser, whose thinking is almost twisted inside out?

21 Jul: ABC Breakfast: How climate change impacts health
The World Health Organisation predicts that by 2030, climate change will cause an extra 250,000 deaths per year.
Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty says in the longer term, the numbers could be ‘infinitely worse’ caused less by the spread of infectious diseases, but by the health impacts of food insecurity and social disruption.
The former Australian of the Year says that developing a national strategy on climate and health should be a priority for the new Turnbull Government.
LINK: Toward a National Strategy on Climate, Health and Well-being for Australia, Climate and Health Alliancehttp://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/how-climate-change-impacts/7647434

ABC summary below doesn’t mention CAGW, but Freeland brings up IPCC/CAGW early on, so it’s not only environmental damage caused by warfare that exercises his mind:

19 Jul: ABC Big Ideas: Crimes against the environment
Throughout history the practice of ‘scorched earth’ has been used as a deliberate military strategy and these actions, according to international law expert Steven Freeland, should be added to the list of crimes so grave that they are dealt with by the International Criminal Court…
Highlights of Crimes against the environment under international law presented by the Australian Institute of International Affairs and the Victorian Law Foundation, 16 May 2016, Melbourne…

Nov 2015: The Conversation: Crimes against the environment: the silent victim of warfare
The International Court of Justice has clearly recognised that damage to its environment may constitute an “essential interest” of a state. Such recognition will only increase as the world gains further insights into the broader state of the global environment, including the disastrous effects of climate change…
Just as international law has made great strides forward by classifying rape during armed conflict as a war crime, a crime against humanity, or even genocide in certain circumstances, we should recognise that intentional environmental destruction can also constitute an international crime. Proper modes of accountability should be incorporated into the mechanisms of international criminal justice.
“Crimes against the environment” should therefore be incorporated as a separate crime within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, in order to better protect our most cherished assets for future generations.

Freeland has been at it a long time, & admits on Big Ideas it may take another 20 years to get environmental damage added to the ICC list of prosecutable crimes:

Opinion piece: Climate Change is also a Human Rights Issue, by Professor Steven Freeland
First published in ‘The Age’ on Thursday 10 December, 2009.
(Steven Freeland is Professor of International Law, University of Western Sydney and Visiting Professional at the International Criminal Court, The Hague)
States continue to protect their sovereignty and any perceived threats to their cultural and political integrity, and economic well being. The development of minimum (global) human rights standards challenges the exclusive powers of States to impose a system of legal regulation within their own territory…
As early as 1972, a landmark international declaration provided that humankind bears ‘a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations’…
Further, climate change has devastating effects of the human rights of many people. Reports by both the IPCC and the United Nations have clearly shown how rising sea levels, changing weather patterns and other climate-related impacts significantly threaten fundamental rights such as the right to life, the right to food, the right to water, the right to health, the right to adequate housing and the self-determination rights of indigenous peoples. While there may be some arguments around the edges of this debate as to the precise extent of these impacts, no-one can dispute with any credibility that this is already taking place.
Even more significantly, it is widely agreed that climate change is itself a threat to international peace and security…

Uni Western Sydney: Professor Steven Freeland
PROFESSOR, School of Law
He has been an Expert Assessor of Research Proposals to the Australian Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, the National Research Foundation of South Africa, and the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, and has taught courses at Universities in The Netherlands, Austria, Belarus, China, Italy, Germany, Bulgaria, Estonia, Slovakia, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Denmark, United States, Australia, Turkey, France and Singapore…
He has also been a Visiting Professional within the Appeals Chamber at the International Criminal Court (ICC), and a Special Advisor to the Danish Foreign Ministry in matters related to the ICC…

People may have noticed that a Tony Wood from the Grattan Institute (leftoid non-think tank) has recommended that Govts, preferably the Feds, now subsidise coal and gas generators to stay online as reliable backup for the unpredictable intermittency of wind.

So that means the taxpayer subsidises wind through the RET so it can displace coal and gas, and also subsidises coal and gas to substitute for wind when it stops.

The MSM are so locked into their impenetrable vanity that no report saying WTF has been seen, apart from a brief mention in an Aus editorial.

Just wait for the renewables lobby to then use this to point the finger at fossils fuels receiving more subsidies and thus lobby for more renewables deployment subsidies instead. The MSM will report on that, I have no doubt.

reg required for the following NYT article, but a summary on CarbonBrief states:

“The world “would do well to reconsider the promise and the limitations of its infatuation with renewable energy”, argues Eduardo Porter, a columnist for the New York Times. Renewables are producing temporary power gluts, from Australia to California, that are “driving out other energy sources”, while in the US, renewables are helping to push nuclear power “into bankruptcy”. Displacing nuclear energy makes clearly makes the battle against climate change more difficult, Porter writes.”

20 Jul: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: EU climate package ‘not in line with Paris goals’
European Commission plans to tackle emissions from transport, buildings and farming next decade do not go far enough, say greens
Wendel Trio, director of Climate Action Network Europe: “After all the rhetoric on the need to increase ambition through regular reviews that the EU pushed for in Paris, failing to include a review mechanism in our own laws sends a wrong signal abroad.”…
And “flexibilities” allow countries to count a total of 100 million tonnes of surplus emissions credits in the carbon market and 280Mt from forestry towards their goals. The biggest carve-outs go to Ireland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Latvia and Lithuania.
Femke de Jong from Carbon Market Watch said: “Loopholes risk preventing the real-world delivery of this insufficient target by allowing countries to cheat their way out of their climate commitments.”…http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/07/20/eu-climate-package-not-in-line-with-paris-goals/

20 Jul: Reuters: Alissa de Carbonnel: EU national climate goals test bloc’s resolve amid Brexit
EU regulators doled out bitterly disputed national emissions-reduction targets on Wednesday for spreading the burden of the bloc’s climate goals by 2030, despite risks Britain’s exit could unravel the effort to fight global warming…
“We cannot do nothing. If something happens, we will adapt,” Climate and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said. “We have to have a signal to industry and to stakeholders.”…
Without Britain, the remaining 27 nations could either weaken climate goals, triggering international criticism, or step up ambitions already contested by states that rely on polluting sectors such as coal in Poland or farming in Ireland.
“It’s one rich country less to take on some of the burden from the Poles,” one EU diplomat said…http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-climatechange-idUSKCN10017B

19 Jul: The Hill: Devin Henry: UN chief calls for quick ratification of Paris climate deal
The United Nations will host a Sept. 21 event for countries to formally enter the deal, the U.N. announced on Tuesday…
So far, only 19 countries have entered the deal, representing less than one-quarter of 1 percent of emissions, according to the World Resources Institute. France, too, has ratified the deal, but it will only join the deal along with the rest of the European Union…
Ban’s call comes the same day Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, said he would not follow the deal’s terms…http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/288394-un-chief-calls-for-quick-ratification-of-paris-climate-deal